My wife works for a journal publishing company who prints a lot of medical journals.  I got on their archive database the other day to look up cluster headaches just in case there was something I didn't know.  I found an article on Histamine Intolerance.  It's interesting to me because a lot of the things that contain histamines tend to be my triggers ... such as aged cheeses and alcohol.  Some of the article is posted below, although I can't distribute the whole thing due to legal restrictions, I pulled out the part that mentions cluster headaches specifically.

Has anyone here looked into histamine intolerance and its relation to cluster headaches?  Thanks in advance.



Histamine and histamine intolerance

Headache can be induced dose-dependently by histamine in
healthy persons as well as in patients with migraine (53, 61).
Histamine-induced headache is a vascular headache caused
mainly by nitrate monoxide (62). Histamine releases endothelial
nitrate monoxide upon stimulation of H1R, which is also ex-
pressed in the large intracranial arteries (63). In migraine pa-
tients, plasma histamine concentrations have been shown to be
elevated both during headache attacks and during symptom-free
periods. An increase in the number of brain mast cells is associ-
ated with pathologic conditions such as migraine, cluster head-
ache, and multiple sclerosis (64). Many migraine patients have
histamine intolerance evidenced by reduced DAO activity, trig-
gering of headache by food rich in histamine (eg, long-ripened
cheese or wine), and the alleviation of headache (ie, disappear-
ance of symptoms) under a histamine-free diet (57, 65) and
therapy with antihistamines (66).

Interesting thoughts. My daughter has ch and takes xolair, an ige blocker as well as a few more typical medications. When her allergies aren't in control as welll she seems to get more hits.

An increase in the number of brain mast cells is associ-
ated with pathologic conditions such as migraine, cluster head-
ache, and multiple sclerosis (64).

One of the drugs for CH that was listed was singulair. This is a mast cell stabilizer. I never understood how an allergy drug would help but this kind of explained that. Let me know if you learn anything else.

Charlotte

I have histamine intolerance syndrome, there's a thread in the medications and therapies forum discussing the low-histamine food diet.

None of the histamine-rich foods have triggered headaches for me, but I know for sure during a cluster headache my body produces and releases a LOT of histamine. I'm prone to breaking out in hives if it goes on for more than 3 hours.